The objective of this paper is to provide an evaluation of the quality of industry data collected in the 1996 Census.

This paper contains information about question design for industry data in the 1996 Census and previous censuses; a description of procedures used to code data to the Australian and New Zealand Standard Industrial Classification (ANZSIC); an analysis of the level of undefined coding allocated during the Census and a comparison with undefined coding allocated during the 1991 Census. Further analyses examine the coding discrepancies recorded by the quality management system in 1996. The paper also compares 1996 Census industry data to the August 1996 Labour Force Survey industry data and describes the 2001 Census industry coding.